A gentle gust of wind awakens the body that has been sleeping for a thousand years; a gentle gust of wind blows away the mysterious veil of history. Standing on the shoulders of time, I talk to history.
Probably only Egypt has the courage to do so. On November 14, a press conference was held under a huge white tent opposite Egypt's oldest pyramid, the Pyramid of Zossel. On the main stage, dozens of sealed coffins and mummies were lined up one after another, exposing themselves to the flash of the media. The most incredible thing is that at the press conference, there were also cultural relics experts who "opened the coffin for autopsy", opened the coffin containing the mummy, and used the X-ray machine to scan the condition of the mummy in the layers of packages in public. This operation is simply jaw-dropping.
At the press conference, experts gave the mummy an X-ray on the spot The pictures in this article are from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Cultural Relics.
Annual Archaeological Discovery.
It was in this tent that Egypt's Minister of Tourism and Antiquities announced the largest archaeological discovery in Egypt of the year: from September to November, the team excavated more than 100 sealed mummies, ornate sarcophagi, gilded masks, and more than 40 statues of Ptah-Soke (the main god of the Saqqara tombs) in southern Cairo. These artifacts are more than 2,500 years old.
At the press conference, the stage was full of coffins.
The expedition was presided over by Mostafa Vaziri, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, and the entire excavation has been underway for three years and is still being excavated. What is valuable is that these cultural relics unearthed have not undergone excavation, and are very well preserved, brightly colored, and the portraits of the deceased on the coffins are still vivid. Waziri told NBC: "These coffins belonged to the very wealthy elite of the time, including priests and high-ranking officials. ”
The mummified mask is well preserved and vividly depicts the appearance of the tomb owner, which was also characteristic of the Ptolemaic period.
The expert who scanned the mummy at the press conference was Waziri, and the scans showed that it was a man, probably between the ages of 40-45, with teeth intact.
All this suggests that he was very wealthy, in addition to the teeth of others who were still intact by middle age, but also because of his burial posture with his arms crossed on his chest, which was used in imitation of the ancient Egyptian king Osiris, usually used for royal family burials. Vaziri said the deceased most likely lived in the early Ptolemaic dynasty.
Since September, the archaeological team has made frequent gains. In early September, Egypt found 13 wooden coffins in the area, followed by 14 more in the month, and in October they found 32 more marble coffins, as well as 28 statues of Puta Seck, and a bronze statue of the god Nefertum, which is 35 centimeters high, inlaid with precious stones, and the base is engraved with the name of the owner, Badi-Amun. He was a priest during his lifetime.
The carvings in the tombs are also exquisite.
The newly discovered artifacts came from three 12-meter-deep shafts, which Waziri described as "full of coffins, brilliant and beautifully decorated." ”
Experts believe that the coffins were buried in the later period of ancient Egypt, from the late period (664-332 BC) and the Ptolemaic period (305-30 BC) when the Greeks ruled as pharaohs.
Egyptologists are excited about the discovery. Salima Iqram, an archaeologist at the American University of Cairo who works in Sakkara, said the discovery of untouched bones from this period was "extremely important."
Conservators are restoring the artifacts.
The artifacts will be stored in four museums in Egypt in the future, including the Grand Egyptian Museum, which will open next year. Meanwhile, the Smithsonian Channel is producing a documentary called Tomb Hunters, which will tell the story of archaeologists digging up the artifacts, which is scheduled to air in 2021.
The mysterious Saqqara cemetery.
Saqqara is located about 20 miles south of Cairo and was part of Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt, where the Pyramid of Zossel is located. It is 4,700 years old and is the oldest surviving stepped pyramid in Egypt, about 200 years before the Great Pyramid of Giza.
More than 3,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians began to build cemeteries in Sakkara. Archaeologists say that even for people at the time, the stepped pyramid had existed for more than a thousand years and became a sacred monument. It is worshipped as a pilgrimage site, and pilgrims come not only from Egypt, but also from other countries on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.
In ancient Egypt, Pharaoh was widely regarded as the embodiment of the gods, so the burial place of Pharaoh was also the burial place of God, and people believed that it also had divine energy that could help them enter the afterlife, so they hoped that they could also be buried here.
Through instrumental detection, archaeologists found numerous temples buried beneath the desert. There are even millions of animal mummies here, including dogs, cats and birds, and in 2019, the discovery of a batch of cobras, crocodiles, cats, and even two lion cub mummies shook the archaeological community. These animal mummies are the sacrifices of the year.
Cat mummy.
Cobra mummy.
Interestingly, in April 2020, archaeologists also discovered an embalming "studio" under Sakkala, reflecting the funerary business that flourished here more than 3,000 years ago. The studio even undertakes coffin and mask making on different budgets, apparently with a large number of clients.
The cemetery is layered on top of each other. Aidan Dodson, an Egyptologist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, told the Smithsonian institution that because there were so many people to be buried here, it became a problem to find a suitable cemetery here, and some people directly installed the cemetery under the pyramid. It is common practice for later burials to use the past tombs directly, or to put new coffins in tombs that have been stolen.
For example, north of the Pyramid of Zossel, he said, a temple dedicated to the ancient Egyptian cat god Bastet was found, where the old tomb was reused and hundreds of cat mummies dedicated to the goddess were placed.
The related documentary "The Secret of the Tomb of Sakkala" tells the story of a group of Egyptologists, archaeologists and anthropologists who excavated the tomb of a deceased named Wahtye over a period of time, a famous priest in ancient Egypt.